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Rissoles

Small pastry-wrapped meat patties fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Rissoles

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Rissoles

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Finely chop cooked meat and onion, season with salt and pepper, and combine into a meat mixture.

Shape the rissoles

  1. Roll out pastry thinly and cut into rounds.

  2. Place a teaspoonful of meat mixture on each pastry round.

  3. Damp the edges, fold the pastry over the meat, and seal well.

  4. Coat with beaten egg and bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.

  2. Garnish with fried parsley before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cooked meat
Forms the main filling and provides the savoury flavour of the rissoles.
Egg
Beaten egg coats the pastry, helping the bread crumbs adhere and encouraging browning when fried.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating on the outside when fried.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavour and moisture to the meat filling.

The step that matters

Sealing the pastry. If the damp edges are not sealed well, the filling can leak out into the hot oil during frying, so the pastry must be pressed firmly closed.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, bread, egg, pepper, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, bread, egg, pepper, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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